Finally, a cost-effective way to identify leadership potential

Whether you are considering outside candidates for supervisory or management positions, or trying to identify current employees with untapped leadership potential, you need reliable and objective information about the strengths and liabilities they bring to the job.

  • Resumes are often little better than exercises in the candidate's creative writing ability.
  • Interview impressions are only as good as the person who conducted the interview; at best, they only show you how well-prepared the candidate is to talk to you.
  • It's more and more difficult to get any information from previous employers other than confirmation of employment dates.
  • Current employees may seem ready for advancement, but what you really know about them is how well they are doing now; you need data-driven information about hidden potential.

Our Management Potential Assessment is a scientifically-validated employment test that can be used with current employees and with outside candidates. It's easy to use, and you get fast results that help you solve five problems you have -that we all have! - with hiring and promotion decisions:

  • You need objective, detailed information about how productive and effective the person is likely to be on the job, before you make a hiring or promotion decision. It's difficult to predict about how a person will act on the job. After all, candidates are putting their best foot forward during an interview; in fact, it's their job, during an interview, to call attention to their strengths and minimize the attention you pay to their liabilities. But you don't get to hire only a person's strengths; you get to hire or promote the whole person. The Management Potential Assessment gives you objective information about an applicant or candidate for promotion because it is based on cutting-edge science in the measurement of the underlying characteristics that affect job performance.
  • It takes time to get to know applicants and candidates well enough to make the best possible hiring and promotion decisions, and time costs money. Do you always have time to conduct second and third follow-up interviews? The Management Potential Assessment uses the candidate's time, not yours, and then provides you with detailed, customized information about the person's underlying work-related behavior preferences and characteristics. Not only that, but you also get follow-up interview questions, based on the person's self-described characteristics, so that you can guide the interview to learn more about the attitudes the person brings to the job.
  • Not everyone interviews well, and the Management Potential Assessment reports help you identify candidates with potential that did not show up in the interview. Some people simply don't show to best advantage in the stress of an interview, and some interviewers don't always manage to "click" with a candidate. Don't miss out of hiring some of these uniquely-qualified candidates whose strengths may not show during the interview.
  • It costs more than you would expect to hire or promote the wrong person, and this is true for entry-level hourly workers as it is for senior managers. People are not interchangeable cogs who can be made to fit whatever openings you may have at a given point in time, and the costs to you and your company of hiring or promoting the wrong person add up quickly
      1. 1.  The cost of the initial selection process is lost if the person you hire or promote cannot perform successfully on the job, and you have to start another search;
      2. 2.  You lose the salary and benefits costs of the person you hire or promote who quits or is let go;
      3. 3.  Time spent training the inappropriate new or promoted employee is lost, as well as the time (money) of the trainers and supervisors;
      4. 4.  Harder to quantify, but absolutely a part of the cost of unsuccessful hiring or promotion decisions, is the cost to your company of the loss of customers or the damage to your company's reputation that results from having a person in the wrong position.
      5. 5.  Find out why experts say that, conservatively, it costs at least the equivalent of 20% of a person's annual total compensation (pay and benefits) to hire or promote the wrong person.
  • Save time and money on training. How often have you spent money on one-size-fits all training for new employees, money that did not actually address the unique problems or challenges that new employee faced?

Use the detailed results reports from the Management Potential Assessment to ascertain who will benefit most from training, what kind of training will give your company the most bang for the buck, and to boost your succession planning by identifying future leaders - employees who have not only the knowledge and experience, but also the key temperament characteristics the underlie natural leadership.

What is the Management Potential Assessment?

The Management Potential Assessment is a scientifically-validated, general personality assessment that is job-relevant because it measures the work-related preferences that a person brings to the job.

It is the most convenient tool to use in your selection process: it is administered online and is available 24/7/365. It takes a candidate only about 30 minutes to complete the entire assessment, and can be completed in either English or Spanish.

The customized, job-relevant Results Reports are emailed automatically to your designated recipients on the same business day that the candidate completes the online assessment session.

The Management Potential Assessment Results Report is organized so that you can see the candidate's work-related leadership strengths and liabilities at a glance, and detailed information is included for specific selection and development decisions when you need it.

Based on our 38 years of experience, the Management Potential Assessment Results Report highlights five key areas that have been shown to be critically important in identifying and developing leadership potential:

Work Style:

The person's overall work style on the job: energy level and stamina, willingness to accept direction or advice from others, approach to planning and understanding problems, overall ability to learn new information.

Management Style:

How this person will lead and direct activities of others: willing to take charge of situations, delegate tasks and follow up, comfortable asking questions, presenting unwelcome information, likely to plan before taking action.

Dealing with People:

How this person will interact with people: energized by being around people or prefers to work independently, willingness to make an effort to get along with others, straightforward or not, diplomatic or tactless.

Problem Solving:

How this person uses information to solve problems and challenges: ability to control reactions in order to plan solutions, able to blend logical and intuitive thinking.

Mental Toughness:

This person's ability to manage his or her personal reactions and moods: able to remain calm in stressful situations, ability to focus and set aside internal emotional reactions.

The Management Potential Assessment Results Report shows you whether each of these five areas is a strength, a caution, or a concern for this candidate, and includes extensive detail, based on how this person answered the questions on the Management Potential Assessment tool, about what this person's personality-driven behavior on the job is likely to be.

The Management Potential Assessment validated results solve your problem of obtaining objective information about the strengths and liabilities that each candidate will bring to the job. 

Industry-specific Versions of the Management Potential Assessment

The Management Potential Assessment is customized for specific industries.  That means that the scoring protocol and appropriate benchmark ranges are adjusted according to typical patterns for those industries.  The adjustments are based on our empirical research and data from almost 20 years of use of the HELM questionnaires.  The industry-specific versions of the Management Potential Assessment are:

  • Banks, credit unions, and financial institutions
  • Restaurants and hospitality
  • Industrial and manufacturing
  • Retail and sales
  • Administrative and general management.

Go Beyond Hiring/Promotion Decisions to Customized Development Tools

In addition to learning a candidate's strengths and concerns that could affect his or her leadership style or management potential, you will receive three additional reports that are customized for each candidate:

  • Interview Suggestions Booklet

    This report provides interview suggestions, customized for this candidate, to help you explore potential problem areas with open-ended interview questions. And the Interview Suggestions Booklet also explains what to listen for in the answers a candidate might provide.

The Interview Suggestions Booklet helps everyone be a better interviewer, which improves the quality of the information you will have to make hiring and promotions decisions.

  • Helm Summary Report

    The most common question you will get from your candidates after they complete the Management Potential Assessment is likely, "How did I do on that test?

    The HELM Summary report gives you a way to answer that question and help a new supervisor or manager learn to use his or her assets to productive effect, as well as tips for how to overcome caution areas. It presents that person's results in each of the five key work-related behavior areas, showing his or her strengths and cautions in each area, as well as practical tips for improvement.

    Combined with the Coaching Suggestions Guidebook, your future leaders and managers can work with their coach/mentors to develop specific action steps and feedback loops.

The Benefits to You of the Management Potential Assessment:

  • You get objective, job-relevant information about candidates' leadership potential and management strengths. The Management Potential Assessment is a validated employment test; it meets or exceeds the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and the American Psychological Association's Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.
  • You gain consistency and uniformity in the selection/promotion process. The Management Potential Assessment asks the same questions, in the same order, every time. The respondent's answers are scored and the results are presented in exactly the same way. Even the best interviewer can have a bad day and forget to ask all of the same questions of each applicant. Tests don't have bad days.
  • You save time and money because the Management Potential Assessment is administered online 24/7/365, in either English or Spanish, and the reports are delivered automatically to your email inbox. The individual who completes the Management Potential Assessment answers over 180 questions without taking up an interview's time. When there are many candidates for the same position, the Management Potential Assessment helps you narrow the number of people who will be considered to those who are best qualified and suited for the job, and it does so in a time-effective way.
  • You strengthen the quality of interviews by basing them on the individual's results to the Management Potential Assessment. The detailed Results Report and the Interview Suggestions Booklet provide you with sample open-ended questions that will help your interviewers probe areas of concern, and they include suggestions about how to understand possible responses.
  • You avoid bias in hiring and selection procedures by using the Management Potential Assessment because using a validated employment test properly is more legally defensible than not using one. U.S. law forbids unfair discrimination in hiring and promotion, and that includes all aspects of the process, such as interviews, application blanks, reference checks, background investigations, physical examinations, and drug testing. Our validation of the Management Potential Assessment helps you support the case that you used information fairly in your personnel decisions.
  • Results include customized training and development suggestions and guidelines. Don't stop with the hiring or promotion decision! Our Coaching Suggestions Guidebook and HELM Summary reports give you customized information for each person who has completed the Management Potential Assessment - information that enables you to help a new employee grow into his or her potential and become one of your leaders.
  • You have access to online administrative tools, including activity reports, quick reference guides, and free telephone consultation. You will have a confidential, password-protected administrative account at our web site where your results are always available, and where you can find other support material such as "How to Introduce Employment Tests to Applicants." In addition, our experts are available whenever you have questions about administering and using the Management Potential Assessment, and there's no charge to you for answers to your questions.

Here's the Fine Print about the Management Potential Assessment and What You Get:

The Management Potential Assessment is a scientifically-validated, job-relevant general personality test that specifically provides you with objective information about a candidate's work-related behavior preferences and leadership potential.



The Management Potential Assessment is administered online at our confidential, SSL-secured web site. No personal or confidential information, such as birth date, social security number, or email address, is collected from the people who complete the Management Potential Assessment at our web site.



Customized reports are automatically delivered via email to your designated recipients by the end of business day that the candidate completes the Management Potential Assessment:

  • Management Potential Assessment Results Report
  • Interview Suggestions Booklet
  • Coaching Suggestions Guidebook
  • HELM Summary report

You also get free video training in how to use the Management Potential Assessment; the video includes what to say to candidates, what information is in the reports, and how to manage distribution of the reports. In addition, you can call Dr. Helm if you have questions about the results reports for a candidate.

How Much Does the Management Potential Assessment Cost?

For only $98 per person, you get all the benefits of the Management Potential Assessment:

  • Objective, work-related information about a person's strengths and liabilities;
  • Fast, same-day reports (Results Report, Interview Suggestions Booklet, Coaching Suggestions Guidebook, and HELM Summary report)
  • Free telephone training and consultation
  • A secure, confidential account on our testing web site for your company that is be available to you 24/7/365
  • When you purchase Management Potential Assessments, they never expire; use them as you need them
  • No set-up or maintenance fees and no contract to sign. Ever.
  • No minimum purchase required, and you can add more at any time simply by calling our office or sending us a quick email.

Special Introductory Offer for New Customers:

Purchase 3 Management Potential Assessments for the special discounted price of $225 - that's a savings of $69. You will get all of the benefits of the Management Potential Assessment and, if you are not pleased with the results, we will refund your purchase price.